Nicole Salame, 19, was filling out an application to UCLA last year when she got to the question about race and ethnicity. She thought a mistake had been made. "I read it five times and was like, where is Middle Eastern?" the freshman recently recalled. "Is it on the other page, did it get cut off? I thought they forgot." Her Lebanese-born mother told her Arabs are considered white, but Salame didn't believe her. Her high school counselor told her the same thing. "It did not make sense to me, it's so far-fetched," said Salame, who ended up checking "Other."

"Other" sounds about right for the loyal sons and daughters of Allah.

Now several UCLA student groups -- including Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis and Armenians -- have launched a campaign to add a Middle Eastern category, with various subgroups, to the University of California admissions application. They hope to emulate the Asian Pacific Coalition's "Count Me In" campaign, which a few years ago successfully lobbied for the inclusion of 23 ethnic categories on the UC application, including Hmong, Pakistani, Native Hawaiian and Samoan.

That's right, everyone now wants their tribe recognized precisely. Plus, in the new regime of defining identity according to ethnic group, then each bunch has to be puffed up with a yearly parade, college clubs, journals that define opinion, ethnic publications, statues of their heroic figures, restaurants -- everything that adds to a feeling of specialness.

The UCLA students said having their own ethnic designation goes beyond self-identity and has real implications for the larger Arab and Middle Eastern communities. The "white" label can hurt them with universities and companies that use the information to promote diversity, they say, and can result in the gathering of little or no statistical data on important issues, such as health trends in the community. Voter-approved Proposition 209 bars California's public colleges from considering race in admissions.

That's a polite way of saying that colorful people are preferred by companies looking to up their diversity stats; i.e. no white folks need apply.

The Arab American Institute estimates that including Middle Easterners in the white category on the census has led to a population undercount of more than a million, said Helen Samhan, who works at the institute. There are more than 3 million Arabs in the United States, the institute says. There is no count of Middle Easterners at UCLA. Student groups estimate that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Persians and Arabs among the more than 40,000 students on campus.

Can we get a category of "traditional American"? Or would that be discriminatory?

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Lou Dobbs Tonight, March 30 [3/31/09] The program had an excellent piece about Congress working to increase the number of foreign workers while other countries are cutting back on legal immigration in the light of terrible unemployment among citizens.

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Debates rage across Europe on the impact of foreign workers on the domestic workforce. Spain is asking foreign workers who lose their jobs to leave and go back to their home country. Australia has tightened its immigration policy, and placed new limits on a variety of immigration programs. Yet in America, there's a bill pending by Senator Barbara Mikulski to expand the H2B visa program. These are nonagricultural jobs typically seasonal in nature which require little in the way of job skills. Companies say they cannot get the job done without the foreign labor. It's a bill that some who support a stricter immigration policy considered cruelly ironic. STEVE CAMAROTA, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: One of the things that really doesn't make any sense in this economy is to argue that we're desperately short of unskilled workers to be -- to work in hotels or to be nannies, maids, bus boys. The fact is that unemployment among less educated Americans is extraordinarily high. TUCKER: The official unemployment rate for those with less than a high school education is 12.6 percent. Overall, the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent. With 12.5 million Americans out of work. When you add in workers who have part-time work but want full-time work, the number climbs to more than 21 million. But last year, while nearly 3 million Americans lost their jobs, we granted 1.1 million green cards and allowed in another 910,000 workers on temporary visas. It was enough to earn the anger of groups lobbying for tighter immigration control. ROY BECK, NUMBERS USA: The leaders in congress don't get it. They don't not have any feel for the -- for the 12 million unemployed Americans or the fact that immigration actually gets in the way of those unemployed Americans finding jobs. TUCKER: Though it is not clear whether Americans are applying for those jobs. Late last week, a letter from the state department went out to employers who use j-visas. According to a spokeswoman for the state department the letter asked that the employers review the number of visas they might request, suggesting that the recession might impact their business. It does not ask that they work harder to hire Americans first. We asked for a copy of the letter, but we were denied. Bill Tucker, CNN, New York.

As Roy Beck has pointed out, legal immigration on automatic pilot permits the admission of 138,000 new foreign workers every month on average. When the economy was booming, industry demanded and got more foreign workers, both temporary and permanent. But now, as the economy is cratering, the idea of reduced immigration is not even discussed by the elected officials of Washington, who apparntly think their job is to protect the elites and screw the American people.

CHENNAI: An Indian IT professional in the US opened fire at his family members following a quarrel with his brother-in-law, killing five people, including three children. He then shot himself dead, a relative in a Tamil Nadu village said Tuesday. The shootout took place on Monday night (IST) in Santa Clara, a town in the Silicon Valley. "My son-in-law Devarajan had a quarrel with my son Ashokan and shot everyone in the family including my son, daughter-in-law Suchitra, their child Neha, my daughter Aabha and their children Akhil and Ahaana yesterday (Monday) night in the US during dinner," a grief-stricken Appu Master, an 80-year-old retired schoolteacher, said from Ayyankollai village in Tamil Nadu. "My family's entire next generation had moved to the US some 15 years ago and were very close to each other till this happened. Only Aabha has survived the firing and the rest of the family including Devarajan, who committed suicide, has been wiped out after he opened fire from two handguns," Master added.

All six victims died from gunshot wounds, including the shooter, a man in his 40s, who was found dead inside the house in the development, which is populated by many of Silicon Valley's high tech workers, including immigrants and their families from India and other parts of Asia. Police said two handguns were used in the killings. Santa Clara Police Capt. Mike Sellers told the Mercury News that an Indian passport was found inside the home on Headen Way, and that officers heroically tried to revive one of the children — but it was too late. Sellers said that officers found a girl, perhaps 1- or 2-years-old, initially breathing and rushed her outside to paramedics. But she died overnight, police said.

It's always curious when a long period of time elapses after a terrible crime and the dead perp has not been identified. I suspect the local political leaders allow extra time for the ethnic group in question to get their ducks lined up and anti-backlash statement put together. But I may be overly suspicious.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Monday he's ruled out joint raids with the United States aimed at stemming drug cartel violence along their border, but called for closer cooperation between the neighboring nations. Calderon said he wants the U.S. to share intelligence on drugs traffickers and help Mexican law enforcement by providing high-tech surveillance equipment. He urged U.S. President Barack Obama to do more to reduce demand in the U.S. for drugs produced in Mexico and to stop the flow of powerful weapons, including assault rifles, over the border. "It is true that we do have a problem of violence and organized crime that we have to tackle," Calderon told reporters in London, speaking through a translator. "It is acknowledged by President Obama this is a common problem that we have to face commonly." But he said "that does not imply, or shall not imply, the joint participation of military operations, or even the joint participation of law enforcement agents."

The new Uncle Sucka is the same as the old one, by pandering to the Mexes' every little whine. Plus, it's a two-fer: Mexican squawks about weapons from America get fast response by Senor Obama (far more than we citizens get), and the new gun-grabbers in the Justice Department see an opportunity to diminish the Second Amendment with the excuse of "helping" Mexico. (According to ATF testimony in El Paso today, Mexico submits only 25 percent of guns seized in crimes for tracing.) And when Washington sends more officers to the border, their purpose is to check vehicles entering Mexico for guns and money. The new border policy doesn't protect Americans at all. The Boston Globe reported quite a bit of effort and expense going to protect Mexicans (Obama commits more federal agents to Mexico border).

Among new efforts, the Homeland Security Department will send 350 people, including 100 customs inspection workers; more mobile X-ray scanners; license-plate readers and canine teams to southbound checkpoints aimed at deterring cash and weapons smuggling south from the United States into Mexico. For the first time, the United States has begun efforts that will result in screening 100 percent of rail cars moving south across the border for contraband, Napolitano said.

If top Mexicans are so upset by alleged US guns, then they should check cars entering their own country, right?

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60% View Pelosi Unfavorably [3/30/09] The Speaker's favorability ratings have plunged rather substantially in a two-week period, according to the Rasmussen pollsters. Perhaps the public was turned off by her obnoxious performance in San Francisco, cheerleading illegal aliens and insulting law-enforcement officers as "un-American" for doing their jobs. (See my first-person account Speaker Pelosi Boards Gutierrez Amnesty Express.)

Sixty percent (60%) of U.S. voters now have an unfavorable opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including 42% Very Unfavorable, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. A growing number of her doubters seem to be fellow Democrats. While these are Pelosi’s highest negatives yet in the current session of Congress, Republican congressional leaders haven’t been the beneficiaries. Their numbers remain virtually unchanged. Thirty-four percent (34%) have a favorable view of Pelosi, with nine percent (9%) Very Favorable. Just seven percent (7%) have no opinion of the speaker. Two weeks ago, 36% viewed the San Francisco congresswoman favorably (15% Very Favorable) while 53% had an unfavorable opinion of her, including 37% Very Unfavorable. Eleven percent (11%) were undecided. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Democrats now view Pelosi favorably, including 16% who have a Very Favorable view. But in the previous survey, 65% of Democrats liked Pelosi, with 27% Very Favorable.

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Hillary's Mexico Visit Blunders Ignored by Old Media [3/29/09] Secretary of State Clinton has been underwhelming in her new position. She has been racking up major gaffes (like the mistranslated Russian reset button), when the whole job of a diplomat is to be agreeable and non-insulting. In fact, the word "diplomatic" means the "ability to avoid offending others or hurting their feelings ... a smoothness and skill in handling others, usually in such a way as to attain one's own ends and yet avoid any unpleasantness or opposition." Hillary's visit to Mexico did not go smoothly, as noted by Newsbusters:

The second Clinton gaffe concerned her abstruse question at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Thursday, March 26. Her question showed that Clinton was woefully uninformed about the most important feature of the church, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe enshrined there since 1531. Catholic tradition holds that the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on a cloak belonging to Saint Juan Diego in 1531. As Monsignor Diego Monroy brought Clinton before the shrine, Clinton asked her blundering question.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked "who painted it?" to which Msgr. Monroy responded "God!"

Oops! It would be like asking the Pope who painted the Shroud of Turin. (Hey, I didn't know that the virgin image was supposed to be divinely created, but then I'm not America's top diplomat.) Mexicans love their Virgin of Guadalupe as a national historical symbol, and the image shows up wherever Mexican icons are sold. Pro-Mexican Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has a cassock nicely embroidered with the Virgin image. You can't find a proper amnesty rally without one. Along the way, Hillary managed to enrage millions of Americans by suggesting that it's our fault that Mexico is a violent, corrupt sewer, and we should shred our treasured Second Amendment gun rights to help the dirtbag narco-state next door. (Incidentally, Mexico was very corrupt before it became the new Colombia of the hemisphere.) Great two-fer diplomacy in Mexahole, Hillary, where you managed to insult both Mexicans and Americans. What a week. I did like this photo of the event, however. Evil captions are up to you.

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S.F. Dems blast mayor in sanctuary city case [3/29/09] Only in San Francisco: well-paid anarchists in suits (i.e. Democrats), support the rights of foreign criminals to remain in this country and wreak havoc on honest citizens. In the upside-down world of San Francisco politics, a powerful clique asserts the idea that open borders should be available even for the worst criminals.

The San Francisco Democratic Party has thrust the city's controversial sanctuary city policy back into the spotlight, overwhelmingly passing a resolution blasting the mayor for turning over undocumented youths arrested for felonies to federal authorities. The resolution passed by the influential Democratic County Central Committee late Wednesday night also accuses police of racial profiling in making traffic stops in neighborhoods with big immigrant populations. The advisory resolution was written by DCCC member and 2010 supervisorial candidate Debra Walker and co-sponsored by well-known city leaders, including Supervisor Chris Daly and former Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Supervisors David Campos, Eric Mar and David Chiu also voted for the resolution. Campos, who arrived in this country as an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, said it's essential that undocumented youths arrested for crimes are found guilty before city officials hand them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation.

Is Supervisor David Campos still an illegal alien? The article mentions his unlawful entry to the country but leaves the topic there. His website bio is similarly sketchy. Inquiring minds (possibly even some constituents!) want to know. Last summer, the local CBS-TV station ran a poll. Answering the question "Should San Francisco turn over convicted illegal immigrants for deportation?" 79 percent answered "Yes." Even in uber-lib SF, most people do not want to welcome foreign criminals.

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say. The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S. Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). "They work together," said Mr. Braun. "They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected. [...] Although there have been no confirmed cases of Hezbollah moving terrorists across the Mexico border to carry out attacks in the United States, Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the country this way. Last year, Salim Boughader Mucharrafille was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, owned a cafe in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. He was arrested in 2002 for smuggling 200 people, said to include Hezbollah supporters, into the U.S. In 2001, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani crossed the border from Mexico in a car and traveled to Dearborn, Mich. Kourani was later charged with and convicted of providing "material support and resources ... to Hezbollah," according to a 2003 indictment. [...]Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. Southern Command and the nominee to head NATO troops as Supreme Allied Commander-Europe, testified before the House Armed Services Committee last week that the nexus between illicit drug trafficking - "including routes, profits, and corruptive influence" and "Islamic radical terrorism" is a growing threat to the U.S.

Lou Dobbs Tonight: Exporting America [3/28/09] When Senator Barack Obama campaigned for the Presidency, he spoke strongly against outsourcing. Now, in office, genuine concern for the citizen worker has vanished as he recently shrugged his shoulders and cited the power of the globalized economy. Reports were heard this week that IBM had fired 5000 American workers so the jobs could be sent overseas to be done more cheaply.

TUCKER: Some IBM'ers now derisively say IBM stands for "I've been mugged". It's not as if the company is hurting. It reported $103 billion in revenue last year a record, record earnings per share, and a cash flow of $14 billion. Ironically the news came even as the president was taking a question about outsourcing at his town hall meeting with an answer that didn't seem very hopeful.OBAMA: It's dependent on low-wage, low-skill labor. It's very hard to hang on to those jobs because there's always a country out there that pays lower wages than the U.S. TUCKER: But a union spokesman says that many of the jobs IBM is cutting are not low skill, low-paid jobs, but high-skill jobs that can also be done in countries that pay lower wages than in the U.S. Last year on the campaign trail candidate Obama waved a sword that President Obama now seems reluctant to wield. OBAMA: I say let's end tax cuts for companies that shift jobs overseas. We'll stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, give them to companies that are creating good jobs right here in Virginia. TUCKER: In the opinion of one economist who worked in the Clinton administration, it's the difference between wanting power and being in power and out of touch. PROF. PETER MORICI, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: When you have a presidency that's staffed by Ivy leaguers, no one that's ever manufactured anything, it's no wonder that they view jobs that make things in America with the saying, ship them off to India, borrow the money we need, and employ everybody at a municipal government office. (END VIDEOTAPE) TUCKER: And the numbers being talked about if they hold up means that IBM will have quietly fired somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000 U.S. workers so far this year according to the union. And we should not forget that IBM CEO earlier this year lobbied in Washington for stimulus money to the high-tech, Lou, telling the president that $30 billion would create jobs. Of course I guess you know he neglected to say where it would create jobs. DOBBS: This is striking and it's embarrassing one would think for the president to be having taken a position on the campaign trail and basically today in that Internet virtual town hall meeting to say, basically, adios to the jobs, good luck. And they weren't jobs we wanted anyway.

Shelbyville is about an hour's drive from Nashville, in the heart of the Bible Belt. Like many Americans, the citizens of Shelbyville knew little about Somalia other than the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident, in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed while battling warlords and Islamic jihadists in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. So when hundreds of Somalis began turning up in the town--many of them dressed in traditional Islamic garb--locals quickly took notice. "They've had an impact here. Unfortunately, it's not been a good impact," said Brian Mosely, a reporter for the local Shelbyville Times-Gazette.Mosely won an award from the Associated Press for a series of articles he wrote for the paper about Shelbyville's Somalis. "I found that there was just an enormous culture clash going on here," he said. "The Somalis were--according to a lot of the people I talked to here--were being very, very rude, inconsiderate, very demanding. They would go into stores and haggle over prices. They would also demand to see a male salesperson, would not deal with women in stores."

Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city's 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a "duty," claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities. "In those neighborhoods it's not our government that's in power," he said, "but the Muslim authorities — the mosques, the imams — who are in charge." FOX News visited one of those neighborhoods, called Molenbeek, which looks more like North Africa than the heart of Europe. For some Belgians, that's not a problem. The mayor of Molenbeek, Socialist Philippe Moureaux, has worked hard to help Muslims try to integrate over the past decade and a half. Moureaux believes multiculturalism is a good thing. He says even those who disagree with him should get used to life as it is in Brussels today: "Be realistic. They're here. They're relatively numerous and they're growing." Many Moroccans have been in Belgium for decades and are now citizens, as are their children. The imam of one of the main mosques, which thousands of young Moroccans attend each Friday, stressed that Muslim immigrants have starting blending in around Brussels. During FOX News' brief visit, there were no fiery demonstrations of the kind that have wracked the Netherlands, though the municipality is sometimes considered dangerous to traverse at night.

Panipat (Haryana): The war against insanitation is being fought by women in Haryana by placing a simple condition before their daughters get married - her new household should have a toilet. Suresh Devi, 52, a resident of Shahar Malpur village near Panipat, about 100 km from New Delhi, had been forced to defecate in the open till not so long ago, as there was no toilet in her home. But when her daughter got married, she made sure the bride had a toilet in her new home. "My in-laws did not have a toilet at home and nor did my parents. Everybody at home used to go to the fields for defecation. We never had a toilet at home until the village panchayat (council) got one made last year. [...] In a country where 665 million people still defecate in the open and where killer diseases like diarrhoea, typhoid, jaundice and malaria are all caused by lack of hygeine, the state government's sanitation campaign has come as a major change.

All that untreated sewage laying around finds its way into the water supply, leading to many health problems.

Mexico's economy is being dragged down by the recession to the north. American addicts have turned Mexico into a drug superhighway, and its police and soldiers are under assault from American guns. Nafta promised 15 years ago that Mexican trucks would be allowed on American roads, but Congress said they were unsafe. United States-Mexican relations are in the midst of what can be described as a neighborly feud, one that stretches along a lengthy shared fence. That border fence, which has become a wall in some places, is another irritant.

Mr. Obama acknowledged contingency plans to deploy troops to the border if too much of the violence spilled over into the United States, but he said almost in the same breath that no such deployment was imminent. "I think it's unacceptable if you've got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens," Mr. Obama told reporters when asked if he might deploy troops. "I think if one U.S. citizen is killed because of foreign nationals who are engaging in violent crime, that's enough of a concern to do something about it."

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U.S. readies plan for drug cartel threat [3/26/09] The story about Washington's thoughtful preparations for a hoard of Mexican "refugees", particularly the video below, has a disturbing element of invitation, that if Mexico experiences a meltdown, Uncle Sucker del Norte will have some welcoming camps set up for long-suffering Mexes. Phooey on that. If a hundred thousand illegally cross the border daily rather than ten thousand, how is that qualitatively different than what goes on now? If there were some sort of political crisis, a run for the border might follow just because millions of Mexicans think it's their opportunity to play refugee and get the special goodies.

Contingency planning began last summer, and while officials are reluctant to give out details, if Homeland Security can't handle the situation the plan could include a "full federal response," retired Vice Adm. Roger Rufe Jr., the department's director of operations coordination, told a House panel earlier this month. He said Homeland Security was working with the National Guard and Defense Department "to make sure we're ready when the time comes." With hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border already each year, it's difficult to know who's fleeing violence and who is coming for work or family.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians," she said during her flight to Mexico City. "I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility." She said US efforts to ban drugs such as cocaine and heroine had clearly not worked and it was unfair to blame Mexico for its drug cartel problem. Although Barack Obama has pledged to devote an additional 360 federal agents to border security, the US Congress this month trimmed the amount of drug aid money it will set aside this fiscal year to $300 million from $400 million last year. Mrs Clinton later pledged $80m for helicopters to help the fight against drugs. [...] Mexico has repeatedly said it cannot contain the increasingly brutal cartels, now armed with grenades and rocket launchers, if America does not do more to stop the drugs gangs buying guns in the US, where they are much easier to obtain.

Say, where do the bad guys get grenades and rocket launchers? Not in my local gun store, that's for sure. Also, check out how BHO has "pledged" only 360 new officers -- it's just window dressing, even if the extra boots ever show up.

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Cane-Fu teaches seniors self-defense [3/24/09] Self-protection is a basic human right, but you don't always have a nice Glock handy while strolling along some diverse street. Noting that practicality, senior citizens are turning to an item they may already have -- the cane -- for defensive purposes. In fact, canes are now showing up in martial arts studios...

Pay no mind to the groans that come with stretching, to hair that is gray or gone altogether. Ignore the cautiousness of their steps and the canes in their hands. These seniors are ready to fight. A rainbow of martial arts belts dangles above the mirror along one wall of this small dojo; swords, nunchuks and sickles hang near the front. Punching bags and torso targets line the room, but they'll need none of these. Their weapons are their canes. At the helm of the class is one of the country's most recognized cane fighters, Mark Shuey, a slight man who, at 62, has hair and skin starting to show signs of age. He has traveled from Lake Tahoe, Nev., to teach this group of 16 how to protect themselves from attackers. He calls it Cane-Fu. Cane fighting classes have popped up all over the country, in part due to the influence of Cane Masters, the company Shuey founded that sells wood canes made of harder, thicker wood, to sustain wear and wider crooks to fit around an attacker's neck. Now, it's being offered at dojos and increasingly in senior centers and retirement communities. "You don't have to be powerful, you don't have to be fast," said Gary Hernandez, who runs the dojo here northeast of Tampa where the session was held and where he teaches cane fighting classes himself. "It's a piece of hard wood. It hurts."

Since right before Christmas, armed raiders repeatedly have swept into both villages to carry away local men. Government help arrived too late, or not at all. Terrified villagers -- at the urging of army officers who couldn’t be there around the clock -- have clawed moats across every access road but one into their communities, hoping to repel the raids. "This was a means of preservation," said Ruben Solis, 47, a farmers' leader in Cuauhtemoc, a collection of adobe and concrete houses called home by 3,700 people. "It's better to struggle this way than to face the consequences." But shortly after midnight last Sunday, villagers said, as many as 15 SUVs loaded with pistoleros attacked nearby San Angel, population 250, and kidnapped five people. Four victims were returned unharmed a few days later. The fifth hostage, a teenage boy, was held to exchange for the intended target the raiders missed, villagers said.

It sounds like a sombrero version of Seven Samurai, only without any heroic characters. The villagers dug some trenches and manned checkpoints for a while, but it didn't work out that well so interest slacked off.

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Oceans awash in toxic seas of plastic [3/24/09] I remain an agnostic on global warming, but I do know that there are many serious environmental problems upon which we can all agree. One of the worst, yet among the least discussed, is the destruction of life in the oceans by overfishing and an unimaginable quantity of mostly plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean. Not only is it disgusting to turn part of the ocean the size of the United States into a trash dump, but all those toxic materials are poisoning fish and marine mammals. See the original article for more details and charts.

Umbrella handles. Pens. Popsicle sticks. Lots and lots of toothbrushes. These are just a few of the items that make up the approximately 13 million sq. km Eastern Garbage Patch, an immense plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean that starts about 800 km off the coast of California and extends westward. Sucked from the coasts of Asia and America by ocean currents, or discarded at sea, plastic debris accumulates there in an ever-growing mass that does not biodegrade and is said to be already larger than the United States. Scientists have long known that plastic in the garbage patch and elsewhere is stuffing the stomachs of seabirds and causing them to starve, suffocating fish and choking marine turtles. But what is now becoming clear is that when pieces of plastic meet other pollutants in the ocean, the results can be even more toxic. That's because, as a growing number of studies are showing, the plastic debris absorbs harmful chemicals from the seawater it floats in, acting like a "pollution sponge" that concentrates those chemicals and poses a different, more insidious threat to marine and other life.

Another report (Trashed) contained the first-person observations of a LA-to-Hawaii sailboat racer taking a leisurely voyage home through the North Pacific Gyre (aka the Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

I often struggle to find words that will communicate the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to people who have never been to sea. Day after day, Alguita was the only vehicle on a highway without landmarks, stretching from horizon to horizon. Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world's leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the "eastern garbage patch." But "patch" doesn't begin to convey the reality. Ebbesmeyer has estimated that the area, nearly covered with floating plastic debris, is roughly the size of Texas.

Below, Kamilo Beach in Hawaii accumulates a lot of trash because of its location; plus a graph of the Pacific Ocean currents which pull together the floating garbage.

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Mexican drug wars now worse than Iraq [3/23/09] The headline above is from British paper the Daily Telegraph, so word is getting around about Mexico's spiraling chaos. And the cartel thugs are not armed with dinky 9mm handguns from some local store in the US.

"Quite frankly, in Mexico you can't be armed enough," said Mr Bethea. "The dynamic of this combat is approaching the early days of the Iraq war. The cartels' men are well trained, disciplined and are armed with the latest weaponry, including armour-piercing bullets, rocket-launchers and grenades."

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Bishop calls for end to immigration raids [3/23/09] What's wrong with this picture? The Catholic church has been one of the biggest lobbyists for awarding citizenship and taxpayer-funded benefits to lawbreaking illegal aliens and job thieves, yet it retains tax-free status as a non-political do-gooder agency. In addition, Catholic Charities receives tens of millions of tax dollars yearly for "resettlement" services (e.g. over $40 million in 2004), so we citizens are paying the bill for their treachery. The Vaticrats pursue an anti-sovereignty agenda of open borders for the poor (a tenet of liberation theology) rather than serving those underprivileged persons in their own countries, like Mexico and the rest of Latin America. (Perhaps the air-conditioning is more dependable in Los Angeles than Tegucigalpa.) A typical remark is that of Little Rock bishop, Anthony B. Taylor, who wrote in November that all humans have "the right to immigrate when circumstances so require." The Catholic League attacked patriotic American Minutemen as "nativists" for protesting a southern California church that harbored illegal aliens, and portrayed itself as the victim of "anti-catholic" harassment. Cardinal George is part of the open-borders cabal that has been aiding Rep Luis Gutierrez in his 17-city amnesty tour by providing churches for meeting places and local sob stories for the press. Gutierrez' appearance in a San Francisco Catholic church got national attention when Speaker Pelosi spoke there and condemned lawful immigration enforcement as "un-American."

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on the White House on Saturday to end immigration raids that split up families. "I stand with other faith leaders and all of you gathered here today and with every immigrant family in this nation to call on our government to end immigration raids and the separation of families," said Cardinal Francis George at an immigrants-rights rally at a northwest Chicago church. A diverse gathering of hundreds interrupted his remarks with cheering and clapping. Without naming President Obama, George said the administration can fulfill its promises of change by working toward immigration reform. The rally was one in a 17-city series of meetings organized by advocates of changes to U.S. immigration policy, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

Cardinal George was recented filmed commenting about immigration. His statement began, "The bishops are not in favor of illegal immigration" and was followed by a completely opposite remark (check it out below). He could be a politician.

The strategy is a massive sob-story extravaganza about lawbreaking foreigners, even in the face of a cratering economy. As reported in the Chicagoist...

Amid growing frustration for comprehensive immigration reform, Cardinal Francis George is calling on President Obama to end raids on illegal immigrants and pass new legislation this year. The Chicago Archbishop framed the debate in a moral context, saying the issue was a "matter of conscience" and inherent to building a peaceful society. "We cannot strengthen families when people live in fear from day to day," George told a crowd of hundreds who gathered at an Albany Park church on Saturday. "Such reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change."

Using the Cardinal's reasoning, we should free every prisoner in the country who has children. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? The self-appointed purveyors of morality should consider the well-being of law-abiding unemployed citizens rather than job thieves. Many legal workers would be happy with one of the seven million jobs held by illegal aliens. One example of employment down-sizing is former hedge-fund executive Ken Karpman who now delivers pizzas to keep food on his family's table. He went from $750K/year to $7.29/hour plus tips. When times are tough, Americans will do "undesirable" jobs.

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Mo. town outraged over killings, illegal immigrant [3/22/09] Here's the kind of headline you rarely see -- and certainly not in the Washington Post -- where that "illegal" word is used and local anger over the victims of immigration anarchy is noted. In the American heartland, many communities still believe that the law and borders should be respected, and certainly don't appreciate it when illegal foreigners are left to run wild and murder. Mexican Manuel Cazares killed his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, leaving three children without a parent -- including his own son (the toddler shown in the photo on the lap of his mother, murder victim Amanda Thomas, along with a photo of the other dead person, Patrick Epley).

But some in this Mississippi River community of 17,000 best known as Mark Twain's hometown aren't just outraged by the violence. They also question why Cazares was in Hannibal at all. Cazares admitted after his arrest that he is an illegal immigrant from the Mexican state of Michoacan. The 32-year-old had several run-ins with law enforcement before the homicides, but officials had never questioned his legal status. Now he is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Feb. 28 deaths of his ex-girlfriend, 27-year-old Amanda Thomas, and 25-year-old Carl Patrick Epley. "I don't know how this happens," said Tina White-Masengill, Thomas' sister. "My stepdad told police many times, 'I don't even think the guy's a legal citizen.'" During his three years in Hannibal, Cazares managed to avoid detection, despite a few traffic violations and a property damage conviction after an arrest for allegedly beating up Thomas and tearing up her home. Thomas had a restraining order against Cazares, who got probation in the property-damage case. Police say his name wasn't in a database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Police and Cazares' boss also say he had authentic-looking identification, including a Social Security card. And police noted that Cazares speaks fluent English.

Name? What about fingerprints? How about checking the Social Security number to see at least whether the name matches up? The perp had been in custody for other criminal activities and should have been checked out thoroughly but was not.Cazares admitted he killed his ex-girlfriend (the mother of his son) and her boyfriend out of jealousy, even though she had split with him last fall. The boy will learn soon enough that his father murdered his mother -- have a great life, kid!

However, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that Arizonans strongly support Arpaio's efforts.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Arizona voters have a favorable view of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose aggressive enforcement of laws against illegal immigration have triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Forty-six percent (46%) view the sheriff very favorably. Just 26% have an unfavorable opinion of Arpaio, including 16% who are very unfavorable, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Arizona voters. Seven percent (7%) are not sure. Arizona voters also strongly approve of some of the tactics the sheriff employs to fight illegal immigration and crime related to it. Seventy-four percent (74%), for example, believe that when a police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, they should automatically check to see if that person is in the country legally. Twenty-one percent (21%) disagree. These numbers are virtually identical to national findings on the same question. Sixty-three percent (63%) say that if law enforcement officers know of places where immigrants gather to find work, they should sometimes conduct surprise raids to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Thirty-one percent (31%) oppose those raids. Voters nationally are a bit more supportive of this tactic to fight illegal immigration.

Can the Democrats be serious about pursuing full-tilt amnesty with poll numbers of the American people so opposed? Or are they just going through the motions to placate their demanding hispanic constituents? A third possibility is simply ending immigration enforcement in the workplace and in jails. Washington liberals are apparently testing the voters now to see whether there is any outrage left in the public against immigration anarchy after the recent AIG ripoffs, er bonuses. Fox News reported on the policy change on March 19.

[WILLIAM] LA JEUNESSE: From 2005 to 2008, worksite arrests and deportations increased dramatically, one of the many aspects of immigration enforcement that began to show measurable positive results. But those efforts are on hold, say agents, after Secretary Napolitano ordered an investigation into an ICE field office, which arrested 28 illegal workers in a raid on an engine plant in Washington State. [FORMER ICE ASSISTANT SECRETARY JULIE] MYERS: Certainly the kind of message that that sent was that there aren't incentives for individuals to conduct worksite enforcement investigation. LA JEUNESSE: Officially, worksite enforcement is under review. DHS says Napolitano "is focused on targeting criminal aliens and employers that flout our laws and deliberately cultivate an illegal workforce." That isn't good enough for activists who say the law must be enforced.

"Also of great importance to the border communities is of course the issue of immigration. And by that I mean we need comprehension immigration reform. For the first time in a long time, the opportunity exists to enact comprehensive legislation. President Obama has made this a priority for his Administration. I know that yesterday he met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to reiterate his commitment to immigration reform. "The CHC, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has long taught the House Democratic Caucus and indeed the entire Congress what comprehensive immigration reform would look like. It would of course, secure our border, it would protect our workers, it would prohibit the exploitation of workers coming into our country and it would unite our families. Family unification is an important principle of our immigration and always has been."About a week and a half ago, Congressman Gutierrez was in San Francisco on a Saturday night. We were packed and jammed in St. Anthony's Church, hundreds and hundreds of people came. We heard from families who have had raids into their homes and into their families where families were separated. And at the time, I said it there and I'll say it here, that raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking father, a parent away, that's just not the American way. It must stop. It's just not the American way. So we need this comprehensive reform, and we need it soon. And we need to stop those kinds of ICE raids in the meantime.

Earlier this week, Cavuto interviewed former Representative Tom Tancredo (who called Pelosi the gift that keeps on giving) concerning Pelosi as well as the bigger picture about worsening Mexico chaos vis-a-vis immigration.

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State jobless rate at 25-year high [3/20/09] More bad news about California, where decades of bad behavior in government, particularly open borders and flagrant overspending, can no longer be hidden. The state has so many natural advantages, but has far worse unemployment than the nation as a whole. Plus we taxpayers face $40 plus billion in the hole because of Sacramento's reckless spending.

The state unemployment rate jumped to 10.5 percent in February, a level not seen since 1983, as employers cut 116,000 payroll jobs in an economic slide that has left 1.95 million Californians out of work. Friday's report from the Employment Development Department charts a sharp rise from January's 10.1 percent that bring the state closer to the 11 percent peak at the end of 1982 and beginning of 1983, according to current measures that go back as far as 1976. The U.S. unemployment rate for February was 8.1 percent. During the Great Depression unemployment was reckoned as high as 25 percent.

It doesn't help that California is rated as rock-bottom of all the 50 states as having an anti-business climate. For the fourth year in a row, Chief Executive magazine's annual survey found California as the worst place to run a company.

If the sagging economy has an epicenter, it may be El Centro, Calif., where unemployment tops 24 percent, the nation's highest. For decades, people have crossed the border from Mexico into this part of California looking for jobs, but these days jobs are hard to come by. "I can't handle it. I've got to go back to live to Mexico again," says Robert Duenas, who lost his job as a construction worker last summer in the housing bust. "It's hard to live here. We are kind of broke."

Well, skedaddle on home then, Robert. El Centrol is practically walking distance to dear old Mexico.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of U.S. voters believe that a police officer should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when the officer pulls that person over for a traffic violation. Only 21% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters also say that if law enforcement officers know of places where immigrants gather to find work, they should sometimes conduct surprise raids to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Twenty-four percent (24%) oppose surprise raids.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of U.S. voters favor strict government sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s up slightly from a couple of years ago.Only 22% say the employers should not be penalized, and 10% are not sure.Voters are more divided on whether to punish landlords who rent or sell property to illegal immigrants--48% support sanctions on landlords while 36% are opposed.

Jerry Kammer, a senior research fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), wrote a backgrounder released yesterday that examines the impact of immigration enforcement on six meat-processing plants owned by Swift & Co. As a result of heightened screening and a major December 2006 workplace raid, plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado and Utah lost an estimated 3,000 illegal-immigrant workers to firings and arrests. How did the plants cope? Each of the six facilities took between four and five months to restart full production. But after that point, Swift was reportedly able to staff its four beef plants and two pork plants with native-born and legal-immigrant workers. Swift could do so, Mr. Kammer wrote, in part because of the signing bonuses and wage hikes it adopted for at least four of the plants after 2006. These new policies amounted on average to a 7.7-percent increase in earnings for those plants’ production workers.

QUESTION: My name is Ivan Martinez (ph). I’d like to ask you what do you plan to do on immigration, the broken system that we have, and when do you plan on doing this? (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) OBAMA: I just met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus today, which Congresswoman Sanchez is a member of... (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) OBAMA: ... to talk about this issue directly. As many of you know, during the campaign I was asked repeatedly about this and I reiterated my belief that we have to have comprehensive immigration reform. Now, I know this is an emotional issue. I know it’s a controversial issue. I know that people get real riled up politically about this. But ultimately, here’s what I believe. We are a nation of immigrants, number one. Number two, we do have to have control of our borders. Number three, that people who have been here far long time and put down roots here have to have some mechanism over time to get out of the shadows because if they stay in the shadows, in the underground economy, then they are often times pitted against American workers. Since they can’t join a union, they can’t complain about minimum wages, et cetera. They end up being abused and that depresses the wages of everybody, all Americans. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) OBAMA: So I don’t think we can do this piecemeal. I think what we have to do is to come together and say, we’re going to strengthen our borders. And I’m going to be going to Mexico. I’m going to be working with President Calderon in Mexico to figure out how do we get control over the border that has become more violent because of the drug trade. We have to combine that with cracking down on employers who are exploiting undocumented workers. We have to make sure that there’s a verification system to find out whether somebody is legally able to work here or not. But we have to make sure that that verification system does not discriminate just because you got have an Hispanic last name or your last name is Obama. (LAUGHTER) OBAMA: You’ve got to -- and then you’ve got to say to the undocumented workers, you have to say, look, you’ve broken the law. You didn’t come here the way you were supposed to. So this is not going to be a free ride. It's not going to be some instant amnesty. What’s going to happen is you are going to pay a significant fine. You are going to learn English. You are going to go to the back of the line so that you don’t get ahead of somebody who was in Mexico City applying legally. But after you’ve done these things over a certain period of time, you can earn your citizenship. So that it’s not -- it’s not something that is guaranteed or automatic. You’ve got to earn it, but over time you give people an opportunity. Now, it only works, though, if you do all the pieces. I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration, but they can’t have a situation where you just have 500,000 people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it. So we’ve got to deal with that at the same time as we deal in a humane fashion with folks who have put down roots here, have become our neighbors, have become our friends, they may have children who are U.S. citizens. That’s the kind of comprehensive approach we have to take. All right?

The best way to bring illegal aliens out of the shadows is to deport them to sunny Mexico!

Focus shifts to flow of cash, arms into Mexico [3/18/09] Washington Democrats are busy these days cooking up a Mexican policy two-fer: Gun grabber Senators like Feinstein and Durbin are pushing the bogus complaints of Mexicans that America is to blame for their domestic troubles because of US guns being used by the drug cartels; plus, by having a hearing the Senators get to look like they are doing something about border chaos. Senator Durbin's rather limited border chart below shows you where his head is. He is more concerned about American guns getting into Mexico than millions of illegal aliens breaking into this country with drugs, crime and job thievery.

California lawmakers and the Obama administration have begun to shift U.S. border policy with Mexico, abruptly changing focus from illegal immigration to the flow of cash and weapons from the United States that is fueling a savage war between the Mexican government and powerful drug cartels. "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers, mayors, kidnap innocent people and do terrible things come from the United States," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at a hearing Tuesday. "I am appalled that you can buy a 50-caliber sniper weapon anywhere and it's not restricted to a federal firearms dealer - you can just buy it."

NRA President Wayne LaPierre spoke on the Glenn Beck show earlier today and completely refuted Senator Feinstein's claim that 90 percent of cartel weapons come from the US.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told a group of both legal and illegal immigrants and their families that enforcement of existing immigration laws, as currently practiced, is "un-American." The speaker, condemning raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, referred to the immigrants she was addressing as "very, very patriotic." "Who in this country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families?" Pelosi told a mostly Hispanic gathering at St. Anthony's Church in San Francisco.

"It is no surprise that Speaker Pelosi believes our current immigration laws are 'un-American,'" King said. "Her liberal San Francisco values do not reflect the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans who support enforcement of our immigration laws, border security and no amnesty for illegal immigrants. Enforcement actions against employers hiring illegal workers are a step in the right direction, especially in these trying economic times. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates 7 million jobs in this country are held by illegal immigrants. I would suggest it is un-American to allow illegal immigrants to hold jobs while so many American citizens are out of work."

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Taoiseach hoping to reach new deal on US work visa [3/17/09] This item is from an Irish newspaper, so you have to wonder whether increased work visas is a serious possibility or just some political BS, er blarney for the local folks. However, you can never underestimate Washington's perfidy against the American people where immigration is concerned. Check out last year's lop-sided work visa agreement: 5,000 visas for Americans and 20,000 for Irish. So it is quite possible that Congress and BHO will import thousands more Irish workers even though over four million citizens have lost their jobs since December 2007.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen is seeking to reach an agreement with US President Barack Obama that would allow thousands more Irish people to work in the US. It comes after a deal was agreed with Australia, which has allowed 10,000 of its citizens to live and work in the US for two years in return for access to Australia for US citizens. Mr Cowen was speaking as it emerged that talks between the two governments on setting up a similar programme for Irish and US citizens were under way. "We would like to get the model the Australians obtained, where people from both countries could come for a more prolonged period and work," he told RTE's 'Week in Politics'.Last year, the US agreed that 20,000 Irish citizens could apply for year-long working visits. In return, 5,000 US citizens were allowed to come to Ireland. The new 'E3 visa' deal is separate from discussions on the issue of the undocumented Irish, who are being detained in jail for up to 56 days prior to being deported and also have to share cells with convicted criminals. This has heightened fears among the estimated 50,000 Irish people living in the US who do not have visas.

Below, Ireland's PM Brian Cowen presents the current resident of the White House with the traditional bowl of shamrocks prior to discussing more Irish immigration.

"We are seeing the effect of the economy," Aytes, the interim deputy director of the agency, said in a recent Dallas visit. "[But] we are particularly concerned about naturalizations. ... It is part of the process where people assimilate and become vested into the United States." In fiscal year 2007, a record 1.4 million legal permanent residents applied to become naturalized U.S. citizens just as the agency raised fees for a variety of services. About a million people received U.S. citizenship the following year. By fiscal year 2008, the number of citizenship applications in the pipeline dropped to about 518,000 – far below the 730,000 filed in 2006. Legal immigration matters in such cities as Dallas, where a quarter of the population is foreign-born, and Irving, where a third of the population is foreign-born. In Texas, about a sixth of the populace is foreign-born. About 60 percent of the 29 million foreign-born people in the U.S. are here legally, either with green cards or refugee or political asylum or work visas, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security report that uses 2008 data. [...] "In July 2007, the government raised their filing fees by 60 percent," said Steve Ladik, a Dallas immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "In this economic climate, it is the fees that have reduced demand."Ladik is seeing the slackened demand in his own practice. H-1B work visas, for example, can cost $3,320 in federal filing fees, including $1,500 that goes into a pool to retrain native-born workers and $1,000 if faster processing is requested, Ladik noted.

Now the leader of a nonprofit social services group wants to make sure their brutal deaths don't reflect poorly on the area's large, often hidden population of Latino immigrants. "This is a tremendous tragedy and the whole Latino community is feeling the pain," Angela Mateo Gonzalez, executive director of Servicios Latinos de Burlington County, said Wednesday. The nonprofit group assists immigrant workers and is helping family members of the two victims raise money for their burial. Gonzalez described the victims as hardworking immigrants who had lived and worked on the Sterling Chase Horse Farm on Highland Road for the last four to five years. Their coworkers and bunkmates, Carlos and Cesar Reyes, also had traveled to the United States from Honduras. Carlos Reyes, 41, was charged Wednesday with two counts of murder for allegedly hacking Aguilar and Morales-Maldonado to death with a machete. Authorities said Cesar Reyes, 38, witnessed the murders and afterwards fled with his brother to Texas. Investigators said the murders were the result of an alcohol-fueled argument between Carlos Reyes and the two victims. The subject of the argument is still undetermined, authorities said. Gonzalez said the victims' family members aren't sure what sparked the dispute. "All we know is that Carlos had a short temper," Gonzalez said. "They had lived together for four years, but [Carlos] didn't handle arguments very well. We're so disappointed two individuals had to die this way. It's horrible." She said immigrants often have problems with alcohol, and getting them to seek treatment is difficult. "Prevention is something we try to teach, but a lot of individuals develop addictions to alcohol in their home countries," Gonzalez said.

True! Because drinking to excess is considered desirably macho in hispanic cultures. Genuine manhood can be signified by slugging down 12 beers at a sitting, in fact. Continuing...

She urged Burlington County residents not to think ill of immigrant workers because of the killing. "We're very sorry this tragedy occurred, but we do not want people to perceive [Hispanic immigrants] differently. People from all nationalities commit crimes so let's not start labeling," Gonzalez said. She also said the men should not be condemned for being undocumented immigrants. She said immigrants like them fill unwanted jobs in America and work harder than most job holders.

As I've written before, ethnic mouthpieces often step in after a gruesome illegal alien crime to head off a "backlash" by citizens against foreign lawbreakers. That word is not used in this case, but the intent is surely to focus Americans' alarm about a hideous machete murder into the "tragedy" aspect rather than it being a preventable crime that will cost citizens a bundle in trials and incarceration. Had the government done its Constitutional job of maintaining borders and sovereignty, machete enthusiast Carlos Reyes would still be in lovely Guatemala.

Firebrand Anjem Choudary said he wanted every woman to be covered by a full-length cloak in his vision of Britain under Sharia law. The lawyer, who praised the Mumbai terror attacks, also said he wanted to see the "flag of Allah" flying over Downing Street, adulterers stoned to death and drunks whipped. Choudary, 41, sparked fury this week when he branded British soldiers “cowards” and was behind a sickening anti-war protest against troops who were arriving home from Iraq to a heroic welcome.

State leaders said then that they had ended the financial crisis through $42 billion in lowered spending, increased taxes, borrowing and accounting shifts. California's economy in is such bad shape that Taylor's office anticipates that residents' combined personal income will be lower this year than it was last year, leading to fewer tax dollars for state coffers. "I went as far back as 1950, and I could not find a situation in which personal income had actually declined in the state, so that's a rather unusual event," Taylor said at a news conference Friday. The dour projection is likely to complicate Schwarzenegger's effort to win voter approval for a package of budget-related ballot measures scheduled for a special election May 19. The governor and legislative leaders have said the propositions -- which include controversial bids to extend the recent tax increases, borrow against future lottery proceeds and siphon money from popular programs for children and the mentally ill -- are necessary to restore the state's fiscal balance. For opponents, the new forecast is "going to give them a tremendous argument," said Larry Gerston, professor of political science at San Jose State. He noted that since last fall, Schwarzenegger and lawmakers have repeatedly announced that they have resolved the state's financial troubles, only to see deficits rapidly reemerge. "Their campaign was based on a shaky foundation as far as credibility goes . . . and this isn't going to make it any better," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which opposes the special election measures.

Police: Cop Shooting Suspect Is Illegal [3/13/09] Houston has had another terrible shooting of a police officer by a previously arrested illegal alien. Officer Rick Slater was shot in the face as he led a drug raid and he remains in critical condition. Houston Mayor Bill White apparently wants to tapdance around his city's de facto sanctuary policy because he is planning a run for the Senate. So he blames Officer Slater's shooting on the feds rather than his city's policy of protecting lawbreaking foreigners.

HOUSTON - Rodney Johnson was killed 3 years ago. The shooter: a man in the country illegally. Last week, Officer Rick Slater was shot in the face while serving a warrant. Police say the shooter was in this country illegally. Now Houston city leaders are at a tipping point--they've had enough."The federal government has let us down," Mayor Bill White said. White is sending a 6-point letter to the Department of Homeland Security. It's demanding more federal dollars and aid in dealing with illegal immigrants who are deported and return to Houston and later commit crimes. "A local law enforcement agency under the law we can not deport people that is the job of the federal government and we're calling on the federal government to do that job," White said. This sternness comes after a drug raid last week that left Houston Police Department’s Salter fighting for his life. Investigators say he was shot by 29-year-old Wilfido Joel Alfaro, an El Salvadorian in the country illegally. Councilman Mike Sullivan says it took immigration 4 days to determine his status. "They had to go back through the archives dig through paper files to find out this guy had been deported and should not be in the country," Sullivan said.

Alfaro had been arrested five times for possession or delivery of drugs — including three times after an immigration judge granted him “voluntary departure” in March 2001. At that point he lost his legal residency. Voluntary departure allows illegal immigrants to leave the country on their own terms, rather than be formally deported. People granted voluntary departure benefit from not having a prior deportation on their record if they later apply for legal status. It also benefits the taxpayer by saving the cost of formal deportation proceedings, said Michael Keegan, a Homeland Security spokesman.

In addition, rank-and-file police officers are now on board with a 287g type arrangement, where local officers would assist in immigration enforcement, according to a report from Glenn Beck.

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Domestic terror threat growing, Senate committee warns [3/12/09] Politicians like Sen. Lieberman are maddening. He is bright enough to see the danger arising from hostile Somalis residing in America. Yet his lifetime immigration voting grade is D- and his recent record rates an F-. The Senator's cognitive dissonance was further indicated by the characterization in his opening statement of the Somalis here as "victims" of "small group of extremists who are essentially terrorizing their own community."

There is an increasing threat of homegrown terror stemming from segments of a deeply isolated and alienated Somali-American community, a U.S. Senate committee hearing concluded Wednesday. The hearing, conducted by the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, focused on the attempted recruitment of young Somali-American men by al-Shabaab, "a violent and brutal extremist (Somali) group" with significant ties to al Qaeda, according to the U.S. State Department. "Over the last two years, individuals from the Somali community in the United States, including American citizens, have left for Somalia to support and in some cases fight on behalf of al-Shabaab," noted the committee's chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut.

The hearing [Senate page here has a video and witness testimony] included some common-sense cultural observations...

"The (tough) adjustment to American society has reinforced their greater insularity compared to other more integrated recent immigrant communities and has aggravated the challenges of assimilation for their children," [Andrew Liepman] said. [...]Many refugees, he said, "lack structure and definition in their lives" and are "torn between their parents' traditional tribal and clan identities and the new cultures and traditions offered by American society."

That's right, and furthermore it's cruel to plunk primitive tribal people (who have never ridden in a car or switched on an electric light) into 21st century American cities. Better to resettle them in more similar African cultures, where they won't experience extreme social alienation from the mainstream society. Of course, Islamist terror doctrine being readily available in mosques and on the internet makes their presence in our country dangerous for us Americans.

Reporting from Washington -- There is no evidence that radicalized Somali American youths who have disappeared over the last two years are being trained abroad to attack the United States, intelligence and law enforcement officials told members of a Senate panel Wednesday.

You can watch the whole hearing and make your own decision whether there is no risk from Somali immigrants. The disturbing political correctness from government officials about "small segments" of immigrant communities can't disguise the danger of the Islamic fifth column. Small numbers of committed jihadists can kill thousands, as 19 hijackers did on 9/11. Why continue to accept any immigrants from societies that hate western civilization?

BOSTON (AP) — More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys. The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The funding may also help support an endowment for the institute. The bill also includes $22 million to expand facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and $5 million more for a new gateway to the Boston Harbor Islands on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy's mother and built on land opened up by the Big Dig highway project. A spokeswoman for Sen. Kennedy, who at 77 is battling brain cancer, said he hadn't requested the money for the library and institute, and that there are dozens of other earmarks in the spending bill for homeless services and community health centers. The $22 million JFK library earmark was sponsored by fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, who is also a top sponsor for the money for the Kennedy Senate Institute. Kerry defended the library project, which he said is needed to upgrade the facility.

Federal authorities are looking to bring terror-related charges against one or more Somali-Americans from the Minneapolis area, and witnesses to the case have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, according to a Muslim leader in the area and a woman who said she testified before the grand jury this morning. For several months the FBI has been investigating about a dozen Somali-American men who disappeared from their homes in the Minneapolis area late last year and may have joined terrorist groups overseas. One of the men, 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, later blew himself up in Somalia. The FBI recently called him the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing, and FBI Director Mueller said he was "radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota." The FBI has interviewed at least 50 people in the Somali community and subpoenaed at least 10 people to testify before a grand jury in Minneapolis, according to Farhan Hurre, the director of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in St. Paul, one of the largest mosques in the Twin Cities. He said most of those subpoenaed are students at the University of Minnesota. At least two of the men still missing were students at the University of Minnesota.

I think Robert Spencer has it right that the big leaders of jihad against America have decided that utilizing the help of the ACLU and the New York Times works better than bombs to undermine the nation. However, young freelance immigrants with heads full of infidel hatred and weapons training can do a lot of damage on their own.

The self-professed mastermind and four other men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks declared they are "terrorists to the bone" in a statement that mocked the U.S. failure to prevent the killings and predicted America will fall like "the towers on the blessed 9/11 day." In a rambling response to the government's case, the men also sought to justify the attacks, citing a violent interpretation of Islam and a series of grievances against the U.S., including support for Israel, the Iraq war and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and in Guantanamo. "To us, they are not accusations. To us they are badges of honor, which we carry with pride," the men wrote in the six-page document, which was released Tuesday by a military judge over the objections of the Pentagon-appointed lawyers for two of the men.

Some loonies still insist that Muslims had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, despite perps' bragging about it for years.

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Sheriff Bailey, Congresswoman Myrick defend deportation program [3/10/09] The new administration has sent nothing but bad signals about immigration law enforcement. One indicator is how successful strategies like 287(g) and E-Verify have come under attack. The 287(g) section of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act set up procedures and legal authority for local police to assist federal enforcement, in particular to check the status of persons already arrested. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) has been a strong supporter of enforcement, particularly against drunk driving illegal aliens, who have killed innocent citizens in her district and state. She first introduced the Scott Gardner Act, named for one victim, in 2005. It would have required all illegal aliens found guilty of drunk driving to be immediately deported after their incarceration.

In the last two weeks Duke University and the Government Accountability Office in Washington released reports criticizing the immigration program known as 287g. They say it is being used to nab petty criminals for things like traffic violations rather than serious crimes. They also say it fuels a fear of racial profiling among Hispanics. Congresswoman Sue Myrick sees a deeper meaning in the Washington report. "I think it was unfair and I think it was biased in the way it did it," Myrick said Monday at a press conference at the Mecklenburg County Jail. "And the administration, I'm concerned, is laying the groundwork frankly to gut the funding for the 287g program. And this to me says we are just giving up the fight on illegal immigration, period." Mecklenburg County was one of the earliest to participate in 287g in 2006. The program gives sheriff's deputies the ability to determine the legal status of immigrants in the county jail. So far, Mecklenburg County has processed about 6,000 illegal immigrants for deportation. A majority were accused of misdemeanors and traffic violations. Bailey says most were arrested only after failing to appear in court on a previous citation. He insists his deputies do not check for immigration status until a person has been arrested for another offense. If federal authorities wanted the program to focus only on serious criminals, Bailey says they never said so. "It says, that if they are arrested then we should check' em. And that's exactly what we do. There's no delineation about the type of crime that they're brought into," he said. Both reports place much of the blame for problems with 287g on inadequate communication and oversight by federal immigration authorities. Still, Bailey maintains Mecklenburg County is safer because of it. He says it's resulted in the deportation of more than 500 accused felons.

Under 287(g), ICE provides state and local law enforcement with the training and subsequent authorization to identify, process, and when appropriate, detain immigration offenders encountered during their regular, daily law-enforcement activity. [...] Using equipment and technology called IDENT, deputies now fingerprint and photograph all non US born arrestees. The IDENT system searches a special biometric database that only contains information on aliens that have been arrested by immigration or have had some other type of immigration encounter. Additional information regarding an arrestee's immigration status will be determined based on an in-depth interview of the individual.

That sounds pretty straightforward. What's the problem? Is enforcement working too well? Mecklenburg County got rid of 500 accused felons and is doubtless a safer place because of it. You can read the GAO report online, Immigration Enforcement: Better Controls Needed over Program Authorizing State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws. The major complaint is that the program snares persons for "minor crimes, such as speeding." Reckless driving is not serious? Many Americans have been killed by drunk and/or speeding illegal aliens. And whatever happened to "broken windows" policing that was so popular for a while? The idea was for police to take out bad guys for lesser crimes and that would decrease the incidence of big stuff. "Broken windows" has been quite successful, but an inclusive approach to illegal aliens already in jail (!) brings out the open-borders wackos, both in and out of government. They want zero immigration enforcement, and don't care about the price paid in blood and suffering by American victims of illegal alien criminals.

In a city where Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot are the titans of industry, there are new powerful forces on the block: Mexican drug cartels. Their presence and ruthless tactics are largely unknown to most here. Yet, of the 195 U.S. cities where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are operating, federal law enforcement officials say Atlanta has emerged as the new gateway to the troubled Southwest border. Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center. In fiscal year 2008, federal drug authorities seized more drug-related cash in Atlanta — about $70 million — than any other region in the country, Drug Enforcement Administration records show. This year, more than $30 million has been intercepted in the Atlanta area — far more than the $19 million in Los Angeles and $18 million in Chicago. Atlanta has not seen a fraction of the violence that engulfs much of northern Mexico, but law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the cartels' expanding operations here. "The same folks who are rolling heads in the streets of Ciudad Juarez" — El Paso's Mexican neighbor — "are operating in Atlanta. Here, they are just better behaved," says Jack Killorin, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy's federal task force in Atlanta. [...] Gwinnett's Hispanic population surged from 8,470 in 1990 to 64,137 in 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now, 17% of the county's 776,000 people are Hispanic.

Arrests came in December when police and federal agents got a break in the 2006 shooting as they charted the relationship and rivalries between at least five cartel cells operating in Houston. A rogue’s gallery of about 100 names and mug shots taken at Texas jails and morgues offers a blueprint for Mexican organized crime. Houston has long been a major staging ground for importing illegal drugs from Mexico and shipping them to the rest of the United States, but a recent Department of Justice report notes it is one of 230 cities where cartels maintain distribution networks and supply lines.

Mexican businessman Jorge Hernandez abruptly relocated his family to Houston last year, terrified that family members would be abducted by kidnappers.He had ample reason to be afraid. He left in August, days after a father was kidnapped for ransom as he dropped his child off at the same school Hernandez’s children attended in a north Mexico city. "One night, I told my wife 'Pack the bags — we’re leaving,'" Hernandez said. "The fear we felt caused us to get in the car and drive for 12 hours to get to Houston." The 43-year-old businessman joined a growing number of affluent and middle-class Mexicans fleeing comfortable lives in Mexico for the comparative safety of Houston and other major Texas cities. They are desperate to escape an unprecedented wave of lawlessness in their home country where warring drug cartels — whose fighting claimed more than 6,000 victims last year — have also taken up kidnapping as a lucrative business. Monterrey, the nation’s third-largest city and Mexico’s industrial powerhouse, had two kidnappings a day last year, according to the El Manana newspaper.

LOS ANGELES — Tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up filled by illegal immigrants, particularly in big states such as California where undocumented workers are heavily represented in construction, experts on both sides of the issue say. Studies by two conservative think tanks estimate immigrants in the United States illegally could take 300,000 construction jobs, or 15% of the 2 million jobs that new taxpayer-financed projects are predicted to create. They fault Congress for failing to require that employers certify legal immigration status of workers before hiring by using a Department of Homeland Security program called E-Verify. The program allows employers to check the validity of Social Security numbers provided by new hires. It is available to employers on a voluntary basis.

FULLERTON – They're revolting. Families with children, bikers, seniors, pirates - by the thousands descended on a Fullerton bar Saturday to join talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI in protesting tax increases recently approved in Sacramento. Police estimated that some 8,000 people came to the Slidebar Café in downtown Fullerton to listen to The John &Ken Show. "I expected a lot and it was way more than I expected," said co-host John Kobylt. The talk show hosts put forward an ambitious goal for their Tax Revolt 2009 live broadcast that ran for more than three hours."The purpose is to vote down Prop 1A on May 19 because it's a two-year tax extension," said Kobylt. "The purpose is to tell people how their Republican legislators lie about their votes. The purpose is to get support to recall Schwarzennegger, (Assemblyman) Anthony Adams, (Assemblyman) Jeff Miller, and everybody else."

The Youtube below of the event notes the cost of illegal aliens to California taxpayers.

John Kobylt: You know how much we spend on illegal aliens year? Thirteen billion dollars! [...] They raise taxes by twelve and a half billion dollars a year and the illegals cost $13 billion. [...] The union contracts have to be busted up. I am not working for government employees... and illegal aliens!

The Tube above was mostly of John and Ken speaking to the crowd. This one shows the local color as citizens chant, "Heads on a stick! Heads on a stick!" "Liars! Thieves! Whores!" Woo hoo!

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Mexico condemns US 'corruption' [3/07/09] Does it seem like Mexico's complaining about America has clicked up a notch recently, particularly in relation to the ongoing war against the criminal drug cartels? First it was the accusation that America's Second Amemdment was to blame for all the guns in Mexico, and now Presidente Calderon is grousing about corruption... in the United States (!)

The Mexican president has blamed US "corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent drug cartels. [...] Calderon acknowledged some Mexican officials had helped the cartels but said the US should ask itself how many of its own officials were implicated. "It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States," he said. "I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption]."

My opinion: the Mexican shooting war against drug cartels is not going well and Presidente Calderon is beginning to lay down the spin for his government's future failure. He says the drug violence is a "shared problem" which is diplomat-ese for "It's America's fault." The $1.4 billion in military aid from the American taxpayer via the Merida Initiative will be deemed too little, too late when Mexico becomes widely recognized as a failed state. At that time, Mexico City may further insist that America's complicity in creating south-border chaos should obligate us to receive millions of Mexican refugees. And President Obama is unlikely to put the military on the border to keep them out...

NORCROSS, Ga. — On a recent afternoon, 15-year-old Marlon Parras stood on a stage in front of 3,000 people and talked about the hardships he and his 13-year-old sister, Emiely, have faced since their parents were deported to Guatemala. He wept as he spoke softly of their parents' decision to leave the children, both American citizens, with relatives and church members so they could continue their education in suburban Atlanta. "This is not a family," Parras told the crowd that rose to its feet during his emotional testimony. "This is not fair."

Nice how the Amnesty Gang puts a 15-year-old kid on stage to cry and blame America for his parents' crimes. Nobody held a gun to dad's head and made him break into the US and steal an American job.

Two years after a sweeping Immigration reform bill failed in Congress, Latino leaders have revitalized the effort, positioning children who were left behind when their parents were deported as the new face of the movement. The campaign is designed to place pressure on President Barack Obama to make comprehensive Immigration reform a priority. [...] "When you have a 15-year-old American citizen speak very emotionally and eloquently about his pain, most Americans will say, 'We didn't know the system was that broken,' " said [Rep Luis] Gutierrez, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' Immigration Task Force, which is promoting the movement. "Americans do support the basic premise that children should not be held accountable for the actions of adults."

The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.1 percent in February, its highest level in 26 years, as employers cut 651,000 jobs in a recession with no end in sight. Friday's report from the Labor Department said 12.5 million Americans were unemployed in February, meaning they had looked unsuccessfully for work in the past month. Another 8.6 million people were forced to work part-time in February because no full-time work was available. The Labor Department adds those part-timers together with other people who would have liked to work but didn't look hard enough to qualify as unemployed.

Roughly one-fourth of the nation's kindergartners are Hispanic, evidence of an accelerating trend that now will see minority children become the majority by 2023. Census data released Thursday also showed that Hispanics make up about one-fifth of all K-12 students. Hispanics' growth and changes in the youth population are certain to influence political debate, from jobs and immigration to the No Child Left Behind education, for years. The ethnic shifts in school enrollment are most evident in the West. States such as Arizona, California and Nevada are seeing an influx of Hispanics due to immigration and higher birth rates. Minority students in that region exceed non-Hispanic whites at the pre-college grade levels, with about 37 percent of the students Hispanic. Hispanics make up 54 percent of the students in New Mexico, 47 percent in California, 44 percent in Texas and 40 percent in Arizona. In 2007, more than 40 percent of all students in K-12 were minorities — Hispanics, blacks, Asian-Americans and others. That's double the percentage of three decades ago.

Also of interest from the Census is its annual Facts for Features: Cinco de Mayo. It's a list of statistics to make the job of journalists even easier when they write the requisite yearly puff piece on the Mexican holiday coming up in May. Here are a couple of stats from the Cinco de Mayo blurb...

29.2 millionNumber of U.S. residents of Mexican origin in 2007. These residents constituted 10 percent of the nation’s total population and 64 percent of the Hispanic population

18.25 millionNumber of people of Mexican origin who lived either in California (10.97 million) or Texas (7.28 million). People of Mexican origin made up more than one-quarter of the residents of these two states.

Hispanics Become More Prevalent on College CampusesHispanic students comprised 12 percent of full-time college students (both undergraduate and graduate students) in 2007, up from 10 percent in 2006, according to U.S. Census Bureau tables released today. Hispanics comprise 15 percent of the nation's total population.

That's nice that more hispanics are going to college, but Inquiring Minds Want To Know how many graduate. The Census doesn't go there. (However, 2006 government figures noted that 57 percent of white students get their degree versus 44 percent of hispanics.)

Religious and community leaders want U.S. citizens and legal residents who have been separated from family members by deportation or detention to come forward with their testimonies ahead of meetings next week in Texas to push for immigration reform. Those with the most compelling stories will be asked to speak during church meetings that are part of a national campaign to show the public that current immigration policies affect not just immigrants but American citizens, Pastor Freddy Santiago, one of the organizers, said during a news conference Wednesday. "Our people are being split up," Santiago, of Chicago's Rebano Companerismo Cristiano Church said in Spanish. "We are seeing how our government is violating the laws of God."

Pastor Freddy must be thinking of a different religion than the one I learned in church, or perhaps he regards Marx as his apostle-in-chief. Hey Freddy, where's your concern about the poor abandoned wives and children in Mexico? The ones whose breadwinner went to El Norte and was never heard from again. (See As men go north, wives get forgotten from the Christian Science Monitor.) Sending daddy home to his family in Mexico would be the decent thing to do.

That week in Monterrey, newspapers reported, Mexico clocked 167 drug-related murders. When I lived there, they didn't have to measure murder by the week. There were only about a thousand drug-related killings annually. The Mexico I returned to in 2008 would end that year with a body count of more than 5,300 dead. That's almost double the death toll from the year before—and more than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since that war began. But it wasn't just the amount of killing that shocked me. When I lived in Mexico, the occasional gang member would turn up executed, maybe with duct-taped hands, rolled in a carpet, and dropped in an alley. But Mexico's newspapers itemized a different kind of slaughter last August: Twenty-four of the week's 167 dead were cops, 21 were decapitated, and 30 showed signs of torture. Campesinos found a pile of 12 more headless bodies in the Yucatan. Four more decapitated corpses were found in Tijuana, the same city where barrels of acid containing human remains were later placed in front of a seafood restaurant. A couple of weeks later, someone threw two hand grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, killing eight and injuring dozens more. And at any time, you could find YouTube videos of Mexican gangs executing their rivals -- an eerie reminder of, and possibly a lesson learned from, al Qaeda in Iraq. Then there are the guns. When I lived in Mexico, its cartels were content with assault rifles and large-caliber pistols, mostly bought at American gun shops. Now, Mexican authorities are finding arsenals that would have been incomprehensible in the Mexico I knew. The former U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was in Mexico not long ago, and this is what he found:

These are the weapons the drug gangs are now turning against the Mexican government as Calderón escalates the war against the cartels.

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Suspects In Fatal Brooklyn Beating Indicted On Murder Charges [3/04/09] When I wrote in December about the murder of Ecuadoran immigrant Jose Sucuzhanay, I had to look hard to find a news report that noted the race of the attackers: New York Governor Condemns Murder of Ecuadoran. Two of the accused killers were arrested last week, Hakim Scott on Wednesday and Keith Phoenix on Friday. However, I couldn't find decent mug shots of both until today, and I had to snap that off an online video. Again, one assumes a certain reticence on the part of the media because this widely concemned hate crime did not conform to the MSM's favored narrative of white perps. The crime does not advance the Rainbow Coaltion ideology promoted by Jesse Jackson and other extreme diversity enthusiasts. In addition, some of the rhetoric at the indictment presser was beyond lofty.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes unsealed an indictment today against the two men charged in the fatal beating of an Ecuadorian immigrant. Keith Phoenix, 28, and Hakim Scott, 25, are accused of beating Ecuadorian immigrant José SucuzhaĖay and his brother Romel last December. Keith Phoenix, 28, and Hakim Scott, 25, are accused of beating Ecuadorian immigrant Jose Sucuzhanay and his brother Romel last December. According to the indictment, the SucuzhaĖay brothers were walking home from a party in Bushwick in the early hours of December 7, 2008, when the two suspects attacked them with a glass bottle and a baseball bat. [...] "The case is a clear message that society simply cannot permit cretins to target for their violent hatred anyone because of sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, religion or gender," said Hynes."We will not allow hate in our city," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, one of many elected officials and advocates in attendance. "We will not let hate go unchecked."

Hate will no longer be permitted in New York City? Good luck with that.

On election night last November, the outcome was wildly celebrated by Somalis living in Minneapolis, 70,000-strong, mostly refugees from their war-torn country. It is the largest Somali community in the United States, reports CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds. But the evening was noteworthy for something else, too. That night, the latest in a line of young Somalis who grew up here, departed unannounced for Somalia itself, joining a civil war in a country few had ever seen and causing concern in the United States. Hussein Samatar's 17-year old nephew left without a word to his family. "He was an A student," says Samatar. "He has everything to hope for to attend any Ivy League school that he wanted to. Why he would do it is a mystery to us." Some 20 vanished last year - all American citizens - an exodus the FBI has noticed for a troubling reason. "A man from Minneapolis became what we believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing," said agency director Robert Mueller. The October attack by 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed killed 30 near Mogadishu, and there is alarm that the skills acquired abroad could be brought back to America. "He could have done it here," says Omar Jamal, a Somali advocate in Minnesota. "We don't see anything that would have prevented him from doing this right here in the heart of Minneapolis."

Yes, Shirwa Ahmed could have blown himself up in the huge Mall of America nearby and killed lots of infidels. It's reasonable to assume that mosque leaders have exhorted young men to do their explosive behavior in Somalia and not the United States, giving credence to Robert Spencer's contention in his recent bookStealth Jihad that jihadists are now committed to using peaceful means to achieve their long-term aim of a worldwide caliphate including America. It's a smart strategy, because bombs just make Americans angry. The left and its various arms -- the press, the ACLU -- provide plenty of means for overturning the traditional society using existing means. When someone disagrees with the Islamic agenda, there are deep pockets for lawyers and mouthpieces to raise a squawk about "racism" even though Islam is a religion and not a race. Trifles like accuracy no longer matter in our devolved public discourse, where cultural intimidation is pursued rather than honest discourse over differences. Of course, it's Muslim immigration that facilitates this infiltration and subversion, and a wise country would stop welcoming potential enemies. Wouldn't it?

The independent statistics body for Britain has a 'sinister' attitude to immigration, a minister has claimed. Phil Woolas questioned the motives of the Office for National Statistics in publishing figures showing one in nine UK residents was born abroad. The immigration minister revealed that he had tried to prevent the organisation publishing the data and accused it of 'playing politics'. [...] Ministers were said to be 'fizzing' with anger last month after the ONS published figures showing the growing numbers of immigrants getting jobs while the British workforce declines. It revealed that the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4million last year while the number of British fell by 234,000 to 27million.

The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state. "It's moving to crisis proportions," a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' "foot soldiers" are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000. The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died - more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid. The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.

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Refugee influx putting strain on Syracuse school district [3/03/09] Washington elites dispense visas to refugees from on high, and as a result, small American communities are forced to cope with thousands of illiterate tribal people whose skill set extends to herding and building fires. Syracuse has been saddled stuck with Somalis (some of the most troublesome immigrants) and Bhutanese. (And the various culture groups don't like each other, requiring expensive programs to drill the ideology that diversity is the greatest good.)

Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - A massive influx of new refugee students is putting a strain on the Syracuse City School District. Since September alone, nearly 300 new refugees have joined the district, increasing the average size of an English as a Second Language class from 35 students to about 50 students. More translators have also been added to the district. The extra students are creating new sets of challenges -- not only for the teachers, but the students as well. "Its quite a challenge educating children especially with a refugee background, where the whole family in some cases are illiterate," says refugee program coordinator Daud Ahmed.

In hopes of saving a strained medical system $6 million a year, Contra Costa County health officials have announced a plan to exclude adult illegal immigrants from primary care services.About 5,500 undocumented immigrants are now eligible users of the county's Basic Health Care Program, which serves low-income residents who cannot obtain any other health insurance. A plan being presented to the Board of Supervisors this month would make non-urgent county care inaccessible to illegal immigrants, with the exception of children and pregnant women. Also on the proposed chopping block is a $2.6 million program providing health care for inmates of the West County Detention Facility in Richmond. "The county doesn't have the money anymore," said Dr. William Walker, the county's health director. If supervisors approve the plan, the county hospital system would become the second in the state this year to eliminate services for undocumented patients. Last month, Sacramento County supervisors voted to shut off non-urgent care for illegal immigrants in an effort to save $2.4 million.

A Gallup poll of Muslims in the United States has found that they are far more likely than people in Muslim countries to see themselves as thriving. In fact, the only countries where Muslims are more likely to see themselves as thriving are Saudi Arabia and Germany, according to the poll. And yet, within the United States, Muslims are the least content religious group, when compared with Jews, Mormons, Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The poll focused on ordinary areas of education, income, community involvement and such, but the lengthy paper was more remarkable that it did not include what Americans want to know about Muslims in their midst, namely how many support the jihadist ideology of overturning the Constitution. In short, no tough questions were asked, and the survey makes the 2007 creampuff effort from the Pew Research Center (Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream) look hard hitting. The constant comparisons in the report with other religions [e.g. "Muslim Americans (41%) are the least likely religious group surveyed to be 'thriving' especialy when compared with Jewish American (56%) and Mormon Americans (51%)." -- page 10] appear to be an effort to normalize a population that contains a measurable fifth column. One notable point was how Muslim women were utilizing the freedoms and opportunities afforded them in the United States.

American Muslim women, contrary to stereotype, are more likely than American Muslim men to have college and post-graduate degrees. They are more highly educated than women in every other religious group except Jews. American Muslim women also report incomes more nearly equal to men, compared with women and men of other faiths.

Muslim women may be happy to explore their potential in a society where such aspirations are possible, while some want to have a Plan B to escape the ball and chain of a brutal marriage. In other news of that aspect of the Religion of Peace, scholar Daniel Pipes observes that accused wife-beheader Muzzammil Hassan stated that he chopped up his wife so she couldn't reach paradise. Mr. Hassan had started Bridges TV to educate us infidels about the charms of Islamic culture and "portray Muslims in a more positive light."

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Mexico: The War Next Door [3/01/09] The March 1 Sixty Minutes broadcast included a segment about the Mexico drug anarchy, and that's good. However the message of America's shared responsibility with Mexico's troubles was clearly high on the agenda that CBS wished to impart, particularly about guns.

Mexico's police are overwhelmed in part because drug traffickers have them outgunned. Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora is helping lead the effort to break up the cartels. "Half of what we seize, 55 percent are assault rifles. And this is what gives these groups this intimidation power. Over 17,000 assault rifles, throughout the last two years. Two thousand and 200 grenades, missile and rocket launchers. Fifty caliber sniper rifles," the attorney general explained. It might surprise you to learn where all these guns are coming from. It turns out 90 percent of them are purchased in the US. "The Second Amendment was never designed to arm criminal groups, and especially not foreign criminal groups as it is today," Medina-Mora said. Asked if he blames the U.S. for not doing more to stop this flow, he told Cooper, "We believe that much more needs to be done. We need a much more committed effort from the U.S." "There was an assault weapons ban in the United States for ten years. It expired in 2004. Would you consider asking Congress to reinstate that?" Cooper asked Napolitano. "I haven't thought that far," she replied. "What I have worked on is working with customs, with ATF and saying "what do we need to do by way of identifying who is putting these unlawful gun into the hands of the traffickers who are using them to murder people. And what do we need to do to stop it."

[LOU] DOBBS: "...the Mexican government will not even provide serial numbers that they say come from American weapons that have brought -- been brought in from the United States, leading a lot of people in law enforcement to think that they're lying through their lovely little teeth on this issue. Not providing the serial numbers. No one can figure out why they won't provide those serial numbers. [BILL] TUCKER: Well and as you well know, and we reported here often, they're often armed with weapons that were issued by the Mexican military. DOBBS: Absolutely and there again, Eric Holder has no empirical basis for anything he's saying. The man is completely at sea on this. And by the way, again, believes that the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is the only non-individual right amendment.

Even if CBS is right and Lou Dobbs is wrong (I doubt it), and all gun shipments from the United States to Mexico were to end, the billionaire cartels would just get boatloads of weapons from somewhere else. The worldwide black market for small arms is huge.

The Islamic Center of Irvine is a beige stucco building that blends into the rows of office buildings surrounding it. But last week, it became the most publicized mosque in California with disclosures that the FBI sent an informant there to spy and collect evidence of jihadist rhetoric and other allegedly extremist acts by a Tustin man who attended prayers there.

HATE preacher Anjem Choudary will march in London today calling for Britain to adopt Islamic Sharia law. The startling move comes just days after processions celebrating St George were banned for being racist. Choudary was given the green light yesterday despite a previous demonstration in which some of his supporters chanted: "Bomb the UK". Publicity for the march, in the East End, carries 41-year-old Choudary’s personal mobile number and says the aim of the campaign is to "emulate the Prophet and his companions, by calling for Islam and speaking out against the oppression of man-made law". It says that Britain is full of "disbelievers" who are involved in prostitution, gambling, alcoholism and worshipping other gods. The publicity says women are welcome to join the march but they must walk at the back of the procession as "strict segregation will be enforced".

This video, recorded by one of the Islamists, shows Muslims openly marching in London in support of overturning the British state to institute sharia law: Islam 4 UK - March in London. Is sedition legal in Britain? Apparently.